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How postmodernism is failing us – 2

2. Postmodernism has proved too weak to counter the overwhelming force of the globalising corporate machine. There are large industries spending billions of dollars to make sure you buy their products. Most of us are putty in their hands: we don’t even notice it’s happening. But in the end, we all watch the same movies, read the same books, listen to the same music. Follow the same fashion trends. Wear the same brand clothes. Eat the same brand foods. Look for the same logos. Our children learn the same hip hop dance moves to the same songs. We may rebel against the mainstream and embrace ‘alternative’, but the industry is quite capable of taking up ‘alternative’ and packaging it for mass consumption.

And none of this stuff comes from anywhere near you. All these products are global. We are having a homogenised ‘global’ (=American) culture pushed on us, pushed hard every day. Where I live there is very very little left that is local. We live much of our lives in McWorld. And what’s more, people have learned to love it! We have been homogenised.

Diversity now means I can choose between 326 different kinds of breakfast cereal – though we all buy them from the same big two supermarkets – and people who live 4000 km away have the same selection. That’s not what the postmodernists had in mind when they extolled the virtues of local diversity. I’m not saying PM is to blame for all this. But it has been the reigning social doctrine presiding over the large-scale destruction of local cultures. So it seems to me it’s turned out to be a fairly empty rhetoric.